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Description

What is
Netlify?

Netlify is smart enough to process your site and make sure all assets gets optimized and served with perfect caching-headers from a cookie-less domain. We make sure your HTML is served straight from our CDN edge nodes without any round-trip to our backend servers and are the only ones to give you instant cache invalidation when you push a new deploy. Netlify is also the only static hosting service with integrated continuous deployment.

What is
Webflow?

Webflow is a responsive design tool that lets you design, build, and publish websites in an intuitive interface. Clean code included!

What is
Forge?

Fastest possible way to host lighting-fast static websites for small businesses, web startups, and app developers.

Want advice about which of these to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

Reviews of Netlify, Webflow, and Forge

If you are new to Netlify, it will take you less than 5 minutes to get your site up and running, 3 minutes if you are fast. To get started simply go here:
https://app.netlify.com/

Choose one of the following options to sign up: GitHub, BitBucket, GitLab, or you can use your email address.

If you sign up with your email address, it will ask you to enter a 4 digit verification code that they sent to your email address.

Once signed in, you will be shown a quick intro:

SIMPLY PUSH TO DEPLOY

FREE ONE-CLICK HTTPS

NEVER HAVE TO LEAVE TERMINAL

These are three huge benefits of Netlify over most other hosting platforms.

OK, now that you have signed up and gone through the highlights, you need just select new site. From there you can either link a Git repository or just drag and drop your site folder into the browser window. Your site will be uploaded and available for browsing within a minute or so.

Once your site is on Netlify, you can setup a custom domain by selected the settings tab, if you are not already there, then click edit next to domain. Simply put your domain in, save and then follow instructions on Netlify's documentation page on how to set up your DNS:
https://www.netlify.com/docs/custom-domains

So easy! You are done setting up your site! Now for making changes and adding features. You no longer have to do crazy manual set ups to get SSL installed on your site, with Netlify even my grandma could do it! You can still use your own certificate if you prefer, but if you wanted it even easier, all you have to do is select "Lets Encrypt Certificate" from the SSL tab on your site in Netlify.

When you select "Lets Encrypt Certificate", Netlify shows a dialog entitled "Automatic TLS Setup" and asks you to ensure that your DNS is set up properly before you provision the certificate. This is important, and it will be fine so long as you set up your DNS properly according to their custom domains documentation that I shared earlier. All you need to do here is click save. The SSL will start to work shortly and all http URLs will automatically be redirected to https! And the best part is, it is free!

Recap of the setup process:
1. Sign up and verify your account
2. Link repository or drag and drop site folder
3. Change domain and setup DNS
4. True One-click SSL
5. Upgrade your site for more awesome features (Optional)

That's it! You are done! Takes less than 5 minutes!

Before I came across Netlify, I would often use drag and drop web builders because the complication of managing servers and setting up configurations to handle forms and SSL were too complicated. With Netlify however, all you need to do for form handling is to put in a little call out to Netlify to say, hey, this is a form I want you to handle. It is so easy! You already know how easy it is to set up SSL now too. I now have no fears in launching a site, setting up form handling and SSL.

Netlify also has amazing and simple documentation. I have never had a problem figuring something out. If ever I have had a question, I have found a resolution with in 1-2 minutes in their documentation. They have thought of everything!

My favorite tools in Netlify are the notifications! You can set up your form handling to automatically notify you via email or even Slack. I love Slack too by the way, and being able to get updates about my deployments or form handling via Slack is a huge plus.

The notification integrations are my favorite, however, I still cannot get over how easy it is to set up SSL and form handling. They are by far the most useful features for me. Another very useful feature is being able to see a history of your builds and having the ability to restore to a previous build or download it. I have been unable to find any of these features in their simplicity anywhere else. Netlify is literally the easiest to use, most reliable and overall best hosting platform out there.

One more mention, the founder of Netlify is involved in the JAMStack Revolution. Here is a quick blurb from their site (Looks Awesome!):

JAM stands for JavaScript, APIs and Markup. It's the fastest growing stack for building websites and apps: no more servers, host all your front-end on a CDN and use APIs for any moving parts.

How developers use Netlify vs Webflow vs Forge

Serves the main site through CDN. Provides super easy password protection and third-level domain for staging. Uses web hooks from Contentful and Github to know when to trigger new build and update the site. Perfect.